in the best condition for at once procuring the mitigation of his sorrow, and improving by the calamity which has called it forth? It is, indeed, wonderful, how the mind clears up its views of God's dispensations, while engaged in prayer. At first, thick clouds may seem to darken his prospect, but, as he proceeds, streaks of light break through, and shine in upon his spirit, and, "while he sits in darkness, the Lord is a light to him." "While David kept silence, his bones waxed old, through his roaring all the day long;" while he restrained prayer, his spirit was straitened;" but no sooner did he pour out his heart before God, than he was compassed about with songs of deliverance." In such a case, much sorrow may still remain, but the bitterness of grief is past. The subdued and humble feeling which affliction is designed to produce, and by which it operates, in part, its beneficial results, will characterize the sufferer, long after the agony of grief has subsided into calm resignation. His soul will no longer resemble the troubled sea which cannot rest, but will be like "a weaned child." And this wholesome conversion of the excitement of violent sorrow into the mild virtue of suffering affliction with patience, is best produced by the agency of prayer. 18 BUCHANAN. SCRIPTURAL SELECTIONS. FOR a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment; but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the Lord thy Redeemer. For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee.-Is. lvi. 7—10. Sing unto the Lord, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness. For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.-Ps. xxx. 4, 5. THE FOUNTAIN. In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and uncleanness.-ZECH. XII. 1. COME to Calvary's holy mountain, Opened when the Saviour died. Come, in poverty and meanness, Come, defiled without, within; Wash your robes and make them white; Come, in sorrow and contrition, Here the troubled peace may find: He that drinks shall live for ever: IV. THE WEANED CHILD. "Surely I have bshaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child."-PSALM CXXXI. 2. HERE are few lessons taught in God's school more THERE difficult to learn, and yet, when really learned, more blessed and holy, than the lesson of weanedness. The heart resembles the vine, which, as it grows, grasps and unites its feeble tendrils to every support within its reach. Or, it is like the ivy, which climbs and wraps itself around some beautiful but decayed and crumbling ruin. As our social affections develop and expand, they naturally seek a resting place. Travelling, as it were, beyond themselves, breathing love and yearning for friendship, they go forth seeking some kindred spirit, some "second self," upon which they may repose, and around which they may entwine. To detach from this inordinate, idolatrous clinging to the animate and the inanimate creatures and objects of sense, is one grand end of God's disciplinary dealings with us in the present The discovery which we make, in the process of his dealings, of the insufficiency and insecurity of the things upon which we set our affections, is often acutely painful. Like that vine, we find that we grasped a support at the root of which the canker-worm was se life. cretly feeding, and presently it fell! Or, like that ivy, we discover that we have been spreading our affections around an object which, even while we clung to and adored it, was crumbling and falling into dust,and presently it became a ruin! And what is the grand lesson which, by this process, God would teach us? The lesson of weanedness from all and everything of an earthly and a created nature. Thus was David instructed, and this was the result: "Surely I have behaved and quieted myself as a child that is weaned of his mother my soul is even as a weaned child." It may be profitable, tried and suffering reader, briefly to contemplate this holy state, and then the way by which the Lord frequently brings his people into its experi ence. Every true believer, whatever may be the degree of his grace, is an adopted child of God. It is not the amount of his faith, nor the closeness of his resemblance to the family, that constitutes his relationship; it is the act of adoption by which his heavenly Father has made him his own. If he can only lisp his Father's name, or bears but a single feature of likeness to the Divine image, he is as much and as really a child of God as those in whose souls the lineaments are deeply and broadly drawn, and who, with an unfaltering faith, can cry, "Abba, Father!" Doubtless there were many of feeble faith, of limited experience, and of defective knowledge-mere babes in Christ-in the church to which the apostle inscribed his letter; and yet, address |